Chopsticks but No Dives in New Brissy
[Brisbane, 6/16/24]
Robert Hughes, “What demonic freaks, what affronts to normality, might the Southern Continent not produce? And what trials for the mariner? Waterspouts, hurricanes, clouds of darkness at midday, ship-eating whales, islands that swam and had tusks—this imagined country was perhaps infernal, its landscape that of Hell itself.”
Of course everything is upside down here. The 50 cent coin is twice the size of the two dollar. As someone with brain cells increasingly scrambled, I get mixed up. Just now, I ordered a long white, thinking I’ll get a coffee with milk, but its correct name is flat white. A long black, though, is not what mates in florid dresses get through glory holes at the Wickham. It’s just an inky java. The new Oz is gay enough. Within sight of this table is an electronic sign at the National Bank of Australia, “More out and proud.” Facing it is a grocery delivery ad with a curvingly erect banana, “Did somebody say late night fruity call?” A schoolboy sports braided and tinted rat’s tail.
I’m sitting at the Fortitude Valley Train Station. Seeing people walking around keeps me awake. Its foodcourt alone tells you much about Brisbane. There are three Japanese joints, one Vietnamese, Starbucks, KFC, Mad Burger, The Yiros Shop, Guzman and Gomez Mexican Kitchen, Gong Cha teas and Sunlit Asian Supermarket. At Gr8tBuns, you can still get an old fashioned Oz brekkie, but even there, “Turkish panini” are available. Schoolkids in spruce uniforms also indicate you’re not in, say, the USA.
Attached to the station is McWhirters, with its Filipino market and two eateries, a Thai joint, Chinese owned Farmers Market, Chueng’s Cakes and Café, Balti Biryani, Hyderyabad Flavours, Shah Pizza-Kebab, Ismail’s Halal Meats, Geeta Indian Grocery, a Vietnamese Jewelry repair shop, Miss Mekong nail salon and a Chinese barber. At 15 AUD ($9.99) for a basic man’s haircut, it’s less than half what’s charged elsewhere. Chinese owned Fresh to Go is a sandwich shop popular with blue collar types. There I had roast pork with gravy and cucumber on multigrain for $4.33, a bargain. Flourishing chopsticks, Aussies chow Asian often. You’d have to trek half a day to find spaghetti on toast or a pie floater like your Outback mama used to make.
In Vietnam, too, foreign dishes have become common, especially among the young or urbanized, but native food still predominates.
When I asked my host, Mark, if there’s a diner type place we could get comfort food, he went blank. There are meatpies, but only at to-go joints, convenience stores and supermarkets. Even more surprising, there are no dives for old farts to tick away their remaining days, and for the always pooped to reward themselves after 5 O’clock. Each Brisbane pub I’ve seen seems designed for trust funded hipsters, careerists and poofs.
Drinks are too expensive. At Ric’s Bar, a Bloody Mary is $16 and “Adios Motherf#cker” $16.33. At Pano, 500 ml (just over a pint) of 4 Pines Pacific Ale is $10.66. Brewed in Manly, Queensland, it’s frankly queer, “Hazy golden in appearance. Big fruity hop aromas of passionfruit, pineapple and pear are complemented by a smooth, dry, easy finish.”
“In Philly, there was a neighborhood bar at just about every corner. They’re disappearing, too. At the side, there was often a ‘LADIES ENTRANCE.’ Many of these signs are still around. The women preferred to sit in the back, among themselves. Was there anything similar in Australia?”
“In the 70’s and 80’s, when I started drinking, there were lounge bars. They’d have a room where women and more respectable men could sit. One by one, they disappeared, to be replaced by more upscale places where women felt more comfortable. In the 80’s, there were new laws that said you couldn’t be served if you appeared drunk, then in 90’s, smoking in pubs was banned. That further undermined the ritual of drinking in a pub with your mates after work. They basically had a plan to change Australian culture. Where it originated, I don’t know.”
Since a 20-pack of Bond Street Classic Gold will burn a $24.24 hole in your $87 Clark Slim Jeans pocket, only 16.2% of Aussies smoke, compared to 24.7% of Chinese, 25.1% of Americans, 28.3% of Russians, 34.6% of Frenchmen and 52.1% of Nauruans. Aussie websites can’t show any brand, only state its name, plus this message, “QUITTING WILL IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH.”
Mark, “The Asians would go into bars to play Eight-ball, but they don’t drink so much. Some would just buy a Coke, mineral water or lemonade.”
Mark remembers when seatbelts became mandatory in his native Tasmania, then it quickly spread across Australia, “With bicycle helmets, too, Australia led the way.”
On 5/28/24, Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan appointed Tim Richardson the Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change. According to Alan, this global first is needed to “make Victoria a safer place for women and children,” and to “stop the tragedy of deaths of women at the hands of men.” The rates of homicides and domestic violence deaths in Victoria are at the lowest in 34 years, however.
“You think this will be laughed out of existence?” I asked Mark.
“No, they are shameless. Look at everything else they’ve done. This will spread to all other states. That’s the usual pattern.”
“But what about your eSafetyCommissioner? This doesn’t sound too unreasonable, ‘We educate Australians about online safety risks and help to remove harmful content such as cyberbullying of children, adult cyber abuse and intimate images or videos shared without consent.’”
“It sounds good, but they will overreach. They have overreached.”
The Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is a naturalized American who was the Global Director for Safety and Privacy Policy at Microsoft. She declined an offer to join the CIA, Grant claims, but no CIA snake admits she’s in that cloak-and-dagger outfit.
Though people think of convicts as outlaws, they must obey endless rules. Those who don’t are savagely punished, if not killed. In this light, Aussies’ high tolerance for social engineering makes more sense.
Many of the worst criminals here are actually recent immigrants. Vietnamese smuggle heroin. Somalis and Sudanese invade homes and jack cars. Lebanese cigarette syndicates torch Indian owned shops that don’t cooperate.
As a multicultural hub, Fortitude Valley can’t be beat. The Bali Nine drug smuggling operation was planned at a Valley bar, Ja Ja’s, now defunct. Those caught in Indonesia, included an Indian, two Chinese, a Pole, four Anglos, including a lesbian, and one Vietnamese.
None of that should distract from your enjoyment of a fine serving of chicken adobo, avocado on sourdough toast, shoyu tonkotsu, lamb yiro or lemongrass beef bún. Do remember that it’s long black and flat white.
[Brisbane, 6/13/24]
[Brisbane, 6/18/24]
[6/15/24]
[Brisbane, 6/18/24]
Think about the traditional picture of a "mom" who pulls the kid inside after he's been out playing, scolds him for getting all dirty and messing up his clothes, then scrubs the skin off him until he's clean. She puts him in his "nice" clothes, then warns him not to go back outside and do any roughhousing that will mess up his spiffy duds.
That is what these creatures want to do to society. Julie Inman Grant is a perfect example. She recently ordered Twitter/X (can't quit calling it Twitter!) to censor something she found offensive, and Musk took it down in Australia in accordance with its law. But Grant came back and said X would have to take it down GLOBALLY. Musk took the Aussie government to court on that one and won. These people want to micromanage everyone's behavior down to the tiniest detail.
Even the ritual of meeting the boys for a plain old brewski at the corner pub seems to be an endangered species in these places. They don't have to ban everything outright--there are many ways to skin a cat. They can encumber things with endless rules to regulate them out of existence. They can manipulate markets to make your favorite "undesirable" habits too expensive for the common citizen. I like to try some of those weird ales on occasion, but it's hard to believe that so many people prefer $15 "fruit beer" to the ordinary $2 pint of lager that the latter has almost disappeared.
Perhaps you need to find your way into the Outback to find one of those good neighborhood bars, and pull up to a giant oil can of ice cold Foster's.
A diner to buy comfort food? Good question. I guess what that conjures up for me is an old-fashioned country style cafe not smelling as you might think of apple pie etc but stale oil, chips, hamburgers, pies, for dessert vanilla slice and mostly definitely not Italian style coffee. Not somewhere that would be my first choice. There was a time when every town in Australia seemed to have a Chinese restaurant and then with time came the Greek milkbars ('The Parthenon Milkbar' at one time was a jokey song). The waves of emigres are coming so thick and fast it no lo almost entirelynger has detectable stratas. I visited the far north-west of Melbourne a few months ago and it seemed to be populated by almost entirely brown-skinned people living in large and beautiful new homes and had the most wonderful Indian and Pakistani restaurants that made my mouth water, but far too far me to think of travelling.
The social engineering for violent or abusive men seems odd indeed but it would be nice if it helped. We have a womans refuge near where I live and it is a serious problem.
As to the bars, I never understood the Ladies and Escorts signs. either in Canada or Australia, not being a drinker at home or abroad. It was finally explained that men's bars are just too rough, with lots of fighting. You don't see those signs anymore.